in Canadian education consistently manifested a fundamental and overriding des ire to reconcile the ideas of the educational theorists with the realities of classroom practice ... ..,Influencing his thinking was his close association with teachers' organizations. Before coming to Quebec to assume the position of Associate Professor of English at Macdonald College, Dr. Paton was the president of the Ontario Secondary School Teach-ers' Federation. For fourteen cru-cially important years in the or-ganization's history, from 1949 until 1003, he was the General Secretary of the Provincial
Asso-ciation of Protestant Teachers. He left that post in 1963 to join the faculty of the College of Educa-tion, University of Toronto, where, from 1967 until his retirement in 1972, he was chairman of the De-partment of History, Philosophy and Sociology of Education.
The first of the two parts into which the anthology is divided is entitled "Issues in Education." In it he defines his philosophy of education, a philosophy that is essentially liberal and pragmatic but which is emphatically human-ities oriented. To Dr. Paton, the main task of the school is to teach people to think.
Particularly notable in this first section are the thoughtful review of Hilda Neatby's So Little for the Mind, a review that is entitled "Dr. Neatby's Doctored Diatribe" and which is the best assessment of this a11 but forgotten condemna-tion of Canadian educacondemna-tion that this reviewer can recaU reading, and a timely essay. inspired by the Ontario ,MacKay Report, on moral and religious education. In "The Either/Or Syndrome in Educa-tional Theorizing," Dr. Paton makes an eloquent plea for the educational Middle ground, for an enlightened compromise between the extremes of traditionalism and those of progressivism, currently represented by the advocates of unbridled freedom in the schools.
The second part of the book, "The Professionalization of the Teacher," treats largely of the role 252
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of teachers' associations in Can-ada. For a North American audi-ence of the mid-70's, perhaps the most timely essay in this section is "Trade Union or Professional Association? The Canadian Ex-perience." Dr. Paton places him-self unequivocally in the camp of those who prefer the association to the union. He argues that the professional association, rather than the trade union, is more like-ly to concern itself with those issues that must be resolved if teachers are to enjoy truly profes-sional status. His approach to education is characterized by per-suasion, based upon knowledge and rational thought, and com-promise, of the type essential to the proper functioning of demo-cratic institutions.
ConceTn and Competence in Canadian Education provides a wealth of intellectual nourishment for those genuinely concerned with the problems and quandaries of contemporary Canadian education. Its approach is both sane and humane. It ls exactly the type of book that one would expect from Jim Paton.
E. G. Cochrane Protestant School Board of Greater Montreal
D. G. Watts.
THE LEARNtNG OF HISTORY. London:
Routledge St Kegan Paul. 1972.
117 pp. $5.60.
These are difficult times for his-tory teachers. Their subject is under attack from several quar-ters, not the least of which are dis-affected students suspicious of aIl knowledge outside their own ex-perience and time. Challenged by these dealers in "relevant" educa-tion, history teachers are on the defensive, so mueh 50 that it some-times appears that they spend more time in justüying their suh-ject than in actuaUy teaching it. In striking contrast to the uneer-tain status of history in the schools is the revival of interest in
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the past in the public mind. The popular success of the historie al drama on television - "Tlhe For-syte Saga" and "The National Dream" are just two examples -suggests that history is far from being a dead subject for many people.
Against this curious paradox, D. G. Watts, a teacher and writer of history in England, undertakes to discuss the means by which the teaching of history can be
im-proved in the regular schools. AI-though the author's commenta are intended for a British audience, they are of sufficient importance and merit to be of interest to his-tory teachers everywhere.
The unique quality of the book is its investigation of the psy-chological aspecta of learning his-tory and the role played by hishis-tory in developing the imagination and intellect of the pupil. lndeed, at times there is more Piaget and Dewey than Toynbee. In any case, the author's main thesis is that his-tory is badly taught because its nature is badly understood and he-cause teachers do not know enough about the pupils they are instruct-ing. Watts maintains that history is part art and part science, that learning history is at once an emo-tional and intellectual experience. Once we accept this fact, an im-provement in the teaching of his-tory will result. According to Watts, the failure of history teach-ers to undteach-erstand the character of history has caused them to err in their methods of instruction. For example, if the discovery approach has been less than successful in the teaching of history, c1aims the
author, it is because it was bor-rowed from the sciences. What worka in science teaching does not necessarily work in history.
Sounding more like a child psy-chologist than an historian (the author is currently a Senior Coun-sellor with the Open University), Watts gives special attention to a discussion of the social deve~op
ment of the pupil, particularly his emotionai and mental readiness to study and profit from history. His message: history teaching should be adapted to the youngster's stage of development. Arguing,for ex-ample, that inasmuch as young-sters in the 7-8 age bracket show a fascination for stories of con-flict, heroes and villains, history teachers might weIl use this time for a study of Greeks and Trojans, or Romans and Carthaginians. Claiming also that studies show that pupils around fifteen are lit-tle interested in any history, Watts says that eonsideration should he given to dropping history from the curriculum in the lower secondary school.
It should be c1ear by now that Watts' book goes beyond that of "tips for teachers." The overall excellence of the work may be at-tributed to a writer who is at home in psychology as well as inhis-tory, and who has effectively ar-ranged a marriage of thetwo. Prospective teachers and inservice teachers will find this book a gem. If there is a better work on the teaching of history, I am not a'Ware of it.
Roger Magnu80n
Mc Gill University
